Nearly a month after a Florida jury returned a not guilty verdict in the sensational first-degree murder trial of Casey Anthony, vitriol the jurors' decision spawned remains at a fever pitch.

It also remains troubling.

The tale weaved by Anthony in the aftermath of 2-year-old Caylee's death is indeed incredulous, to say the least. The evidence - as it has been shared with the public in media reports, during attorneys' statements and by talking heads - would seem to suggest the young mother knew more about the whereabouts of her daughter than she was willing to admit.

Juries are not charged with dealing in the gray areas occupied by suggestion, speculation or supposition, however; their instructions are to find guilt only when the prosecution has established it beyond a reasonable doubt.

In Arkansas, reasonable doubt is defined as something that is "not a mere possible or imaginary doubt," but one that arises from consideration of the evidence and is such that "would cause a careful person to pause and hesitate in the graver transactions of life."

Jurors, by their very definition, are the sole arbiters of whether a prosecution's case meets this standard, and it is not our job as a public to question that. To do so is to question the very underpinnings of our criminal justice system, and the values of presumed innocence and due process it prizes.

Doing so also results in pressure points that have the potential to undermine other values we hold dear.

Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported the judge in the Anthony case, Belvin Perry, was urging the Florida Legislature to change the state's laws to keep jurors' names secret in high-profile cases - this after some of the jurors have already received death threats, even prior to the official release of their identities.

As a journalist, I find threats of erosion to open-records laws troubling, but a Florida public records advocate made another salient point about the dangers implicit in Perry's proposal in an interview with the AP's Mike Schneider.

"If you don't know who the (jurors) are, you don't know if they may have had some biases or other sorts of issues that may have allowed them to come to the conclusion they have, and that ends up with the public having less faith in the process," said James Rhea, director of the state's First Amendment Foundation.

Is Anthony guilty? I think so, but it isn't for me to be the judge - nor the jury.

The English jurist William Blackstone formulated the principle that deemed it "better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer," an idea that traces its roots at least as far back as the Genesis chapter of the Bible, when God promised Abraham he would not consume the righteous with the wicked.

Ultimately, however, those wicked still faced Judgment Day.

It may be that Caylee Anthony will not see justice this side of heaven. There's a reckoning waiting for her killer on the other side, though, and that's good enough for me.

In my opinion, if we hope to maintain a fair and impartial way of identifying and deterring crime, it needs also be good enough for each of us.

Mary Kincy is managing editor of The Courier. Email her at managingeditor@couriernews.com.